


Memories

by Artistic_Entity



Category: No Fandom
Genre: Other
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-12-22
Updated: 2015-12-22
Packaged: 2018-05-08 10:32:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,772
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5494001
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Artistic_Entity/pseuds/Artistic_Entity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>People live.<br/>That might be one of the most obvious things someone has ever stated.<br/>But it's one of the not so many things that apply to everyone. From now on, there are so many categories of people, that you would get tired just by reading them.<br/>As for me, I like to see people as only two different categories. There are the ones who live their own lives by choice, taking part in activities and knowing what to do after they are told.<br/>Then there's us. It might be hard to recognize us at first. We do normal things, really. But we do them in a certain way that is so common for us, that we just smile and nod at each other. We peek at other people, we look at pictures, we ask plenty of questions. We are curious, we are confused and we seem lost or distant. We are the ones who live through other's stories. We are the ones who are usually complimented by being called "selfless" and insulted by being called "stupid" or "unattentive".<br/>And I'm not writing this to brag about how beautiful our souls are, because they're nothing special. I'm writing this to raise awareness to us, as we rarely understood and easily misunderstood.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Memories

It is hard to understand that we can easily recognize the ones like us. We can easily spot them from a distance, by their empty eyes and their full souls. They have so many stories, but they do not own any of them. Of course, some of us are lucky. Some of us have some stories of our own. We keep them locked away and we only share them with the ones who are eager to understand us, to find our true nature. We hide them in small, frail jars that we lock in cabinets, so high that we can barely reach them. We only open the jars in moments of pure vulnerability, to let the power of our own stories give us the strength to wake up the next morning.   
We do shatter too sometimes, you know. Our hearts break, our minds run wild. Because, contrary to popular beliefs, we have feelings. Even stronger that the ones of normal human beings, I might dare to say. Our feelings explode like fireworks and oh, how hypnotized we are by the beauty of the fireworks in our chest. But what we don't see is that they slowly burn our lungs until it's too hard to breathe. We say we feel like drowning, when the certainity of water could ease the ache in our sore lungs.   
Water is calming, water is an element that maintains a pace. Waves come and go. You might feel the sadness burden you, when the waves drift away into distance, but at least there's nothing to worry about, as they always return. And you know they will return. That's what gives our lives a little bit of composure, if you ask me.  
As I said before, we recognize each other. Mainly by the word "lost" that seems to be flying above our heads. We are lost. We do not belong here, and we know it. Where do we belong, you would ask me. We belong to the stories an old man tells his grandchildren before bedtime. We belong to the memories of a mother who tries to use her life experience to teach her child to only befriend the ones who's heart is as pure as Heaven. We belong to a teenager's late am thoughts, when they try to figure out why the worst things happen to the best people.   
We belong to stories that are solely the voice of the soul. We are not poetry, but our souls are. That's a pretty subjective way to look at it, you would say. I'm one of us, why would I say anything bad about my soul? See, that's the thing. The soul. The soul is all we care about. And yes, sometimes you might find some of us who are mean. Some of us who's hearts have been so broken, that they are now protected by a shield. I fear for those who meet one of us who's broken. I'm afraid, because I know how sharp the tongue of the bitter ones can be. But I also know, that the one's who can break the shield and put the broken pieces together, will feel like the luckiest person on this planet. All that's needed is grace and mercy.   
I kept telling you about how wonderful we are, vaguely speaking. I can also tell you that we might not be as awesome as we seem. We do not live our owns lives, but we feed ourselves with the memories and the stories of the others. We find them so beautiful, so fascinating. We admire the dreams of children and dream along, adding new hopes and perspective to something. Something that will never belong to us. That's sad, isn't it? That we can so easily be distracted by what is not ours. But, at the end of the day, we feel fullfilled. Because, why would it matter to live something for yourself? Living is dangerous, but we're not afraid. No, it's not about that at all. We are ready to live. We sometimes dare to make wishes and expect something to change. We keep telling ourselves that we just have to wait, that soon enough something will happen. Soon enough. Something. We wish we could do something. But we can't. See, we didn't get to make a choice, like you did.   
So we keep living through other's memories. We have people pushing us to do things, but we're not bothered by it at all. We find places to go to, stories to listen to and things to observe. Even the most boring things can be wonderful for us.  
Now that I'm done bragging about how awesome, great and amazing we are, let me tell you a little bit about me. Talking about me has always been hard. Did it never happen to you? You are asked to talk about yourself and you freeze. You think, you mumble, you take a deep breath and... And nothing. You still don't know what you're supposed to say. So what could I, who stutter every time someone whispers a timid "Hello" to me, tell you? I could tell you about my fears. I could tell you about the past, the present and the future. My future. See, we can only talk about our own future, as only what I feel, what I see, what is perceived by my own consciousness can be stated as being true. I could never speak for someone else. I mean, I could, but I could never be sure that what I'm saying is true.   
I'm sure you would like me to stop getting lost between words and phrases already and just tell you who I am. I wish I knew. It would have been so much easier, knowing exactly who you are, what you're supposed to do and what you're not supposed to do. But I don't know. I don't know anything. I just keep living, keep trying, keep understanding. I assume that I understand a lot about what there is and what there is not in this world.   
Love. Yes, there's a lack of love, coming only from our lack of understanding. The lack of understanding, again, comes from our lack of wanting to understand. People don't want to. People don't care. And it's honestly awful. People move too fast, nobody stops to think about anything anymore.   
Everything moves too fast for me. It's hard to keep track of everything that is happening without getting lost in one of the details. It is hard for me to understand feelings. So I make up this silly excuse, stating that everything has always moved too fast. She hasn't, though.   
She never moved too fast. With her, it was always the right pace. It wasn't love at first sight, thanks God it wasn't. It was so much more. It was the silence after a tiring day. That's exactly how I would describe our love. It was what's left when you're tired, but happy with whatever you have been doing. It was what kept me sane when I wasn't exactly sane.   
I wouldn't know what to say about her, if you asked me to. I'm trying. I'm really trying. She asked me to.   
"Write this down" she would say every time, wearing that huge, silly smile on her face. "Come on, you know you want to. Imagine what would happen when our daughter or son would read that. They would finally find someone they would be able to relate to. Wasn't that all you have ever been looking for? To relate to someone? Isn't it what you found attractive when you chose me?".  
And that's when I would kiss her, slowly and softly, and giggle. And nod. And give in. With her, it was always lose or win. And she didn't like to lose. Truce? That wasn't a word in her vocabulary. She always wanted to be the one to win. Whether it was about which pizza to buy or what movie to watch, she always had to be the one to yell " I WON! " at the end. And, you know what I liked the most about her? The way she could turn my words into whatever she wanted to.   
"I know, I know. We're not watching the movie I chose. But you have to admit, as you did before, that there are better actors playing!".   
"When did I admit that before?" I would teasingly say, half smiling.   
"I remember once you said you liked that actress. I know it, don't lie to me. I know you said that. And that actor too. So, we're not watching the movie, but I win, don't I?". And that's when I would give in, again. She made giving in so easy. It was one of the reasons I loved her.   
I loved how she would always fight me. Or how she would mumble "Fight me" whenever I wanted to put her to sleep.   
I loved how we were never... It never felt like that. Like that would happen and people would know and give me the look. You know the look. They keep giving me the look. But not me. The pictures. They give the pictures the look and they bend their heads in that awkward way to hide their tears and they say things and chuckle at the ground and...   
I felt a hand hitting me behind my head, gently. Her long fingers were soft and smelled like oily paint and gummy bears.   
"Express yourself properly" she mumbled and wrapped herself around me, her whole body pressed against my back. I flinched and pushed her away a little bit, trying to get up. She didn't protest and for some reason that didn't surprise me.   
I walked away from her and through our house again, as I was doing earlier. I was still able to see the beginning of our story. Of my story. I was going to be part of something. It was going to happen, here, in this small apartment that smelled like burnt coffee and wood and where, if you approached the curtains too much and tried to move them, you would be suffocated by the cigarette smell and the dust.   
I ran my fingers on the surface of the couch.   
"Are you sure you want to get this one?" I asked, once again, after we had walked through the old store for hours.   
"Don't you want this one? It's beautiful. I know it's a little bit old and it could use some help, but... It gives away so many memories, doesn't it? It would really help your writing. It's... inspiring."  
I didn't tell her that the only memories I wanted a couch to give away were our memories. I wanted to look at that couch and see the little red, dark spot that didn't come out after we decided that, hey, maybe playing "Never have I ever" sounds better than pretending to drink wine like adults with stupid rich laughs. She even made me wear a tie and she put on some red lipstick, just because she wanted to drink some wine at one in the morning in our pajamas. I wanted to see the greasy dots that nobody would notice besides us, reminding us of the one time we threw popcorn at each other because we couldn't decide which movie to watch.   
I know, it's so easy to think right now that "Oh, he regrets not telling her what he was actually feeling". Such a foolish thought. I regret nothing. All of my life, I've been taught to regret not telling people things. For once, I know that's something everyone can relate to. Where does this even come from? I'll never understand. Why do we say "I regret not telling her about my true feelings."? What, in the name of mediocrity, are your feelings, that she didn't find out about them herself?   
You say your feelings of love and appreciation are as pure as the ones of a teenager falling in love for the first time. But don't you remember noticing that the happy, hyper girl that always sat in the front row and yelled her lungs out when she was excited, had a crush on the boy that used to sit way in the back and draw comics in his spare time? You're not wondering how you noticed that. You're saying it was obvious. But she acted the same. She kept screaming and cheering when she was around him. She clumsily raised her voice at him when losing at a competition and made him hide in the library with his comic book until the end of the day. Let me tell you, you're lying if you say you saw that she liked him. You didn't see. You felt that she liked him. You felt how, from the careless show off that she was, she turned in someone who tries to catch words with a net. She catches the words, looks at them, sometimes with admiration, sometimes with disgust. She chooses the words that sound better, the ones that could make him smile, because his smile makes her heart skip a beat and she's dying to feel that.   
You say your feelings are complicated, you say there's a lot to it and you have no idea how to explain. There are tons of details to everyone's feelings, but, in the end, they can all be summed up by a few words. That's why we use these words. If you say you're sad, the person in front of you will remember their version of sadness and they will feel sympathetic. When you start explaining, that's when you make it complicated. It's so hard to find someone who relates to everything that you're feeling, to all of the details, the ups and downs of the feeling that can be easily described by the word "sad".   
So, go on. Don't take what I'm saying so seriously. Don't listen to me when I say that we all know, inside of our hearts, who holds what kinds of feelings towards us. Because that inside of the heart can be covered by years of insecurities, doubt and hatred. It is so hard to get to the amount of self respect to understand who truly feels what about you. And that's okay. So, go ahead, tell that person you like all about their hair in the sunlight. Tell them about the way their eyes look like in the shadows. Tell them how much you invest yourself in them, with all those details I was talking about. One day, you'll be lucky enough that they'll talk about you using the words that you organize in sentences to think about them. But don't aim for that, no. Stay with the person that makes you laugh. Stay with the person who's voice calms you down. Stay with the person who you want to tell everything to, the good and the bad. If you're lucky to find a person who's perfect for you, keep them. If you're lucky to find a person that's not perfect for you, but that would do whatever they can to keep you in their life, keep them. Don't aim for the perfect person. Because one day you'll see a flaw and run away. Aim for the person your heart beats a little bit somehow for. It is all that matters in the end.   
I didn't regret buying that couch, in the end. Not at all. I would have been so stupid to do so. She smiled so bright and kept talking about how the couch is so inspiring, I was out of breath from laughter when we got home. And in the end, looking at it, I see our memories. Along with the one when I decided to accept to buy the stupid couch. What if, instead of that, I said no? What if I bought a new couch and we took care of it so it won't get dirty? All I would remember about the stupid couch would be how we sat on it and how we yelled at each other to not put our feet on it. Wouldn't that be sad? That's why I never regretted when things got dirty or when they broke. I never cried for breaking a toy, not even when I was a child. I used to just giggle and say "See, now the teddy bear has a little red scar from when I threw it so high in the air and my dog caught it. Now we have a memory.". Maybe that's why I collected so many scars on my heart.   
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  



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